Florence 2005

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The essence of Florence is both unmistakeable and difficult to pin down. It's neither the most charming place we've been to in Italy (that's Venice) nor the grandest (Rome, of course). But it knows its good points and it sticks to them: the concentrated explosion of Renaissance architecture and art that still defines its civic appearance today, and its misleadingly simple cuisine of oil and beans and salumi that has become a permanent part of our own repertoire. One can't visit here without taking away a lifelong impression.

Unfortunately a couple of restaurant visits (not the best ones) have faded from memory since we took this trip.

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Via della Condotta 37r
Florence, IT

Day 2 - Florence

Visits to the various buildings that make up Florence's iconic Duomo, punctuated by a memorable meal surrounded by ravenous locals at old-school Il Latini.
This was Dante's neighborhood, too; here and around Florence, marble plaques with triplets from the Divine Comedy mark the locations which they mention. (A book of translations, available in Florentine bookshops, is an essential accessory.) The Casa di Dante was under construction, but the nearby little church of Santa Margherita de' Cerchi, where Dante first saw his muse Beatrice, is always open.

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Via delle Oche, 15r
50123 Florence, Italy

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39 55 230 2153

Day 3 - Florence

In the morning, Medici loot and the atmospheric garden that must have been the model for so many leafy mazes around the world and in fiction. Quattro Leoni is conveniently near the Pitti Palace. In the afternoon, back across the Ponte Vecchio to the Museum of the History of Science, a very distinguished cabinet of curiosities.
Tonight's dinner was one of the best of the trip, in a charming small restaurant with a personable host and food both firmly Italian and successfully creative. Good wine, too, including an exceptional vin santo from the Val di Nievole that I dream of having again some day.
Today set a pattern for the rest of the trip in that so many of the great places to eat and drink (including a couple we've forgotten) were south of the Arno in the Santo Spirito and San Frediano neighborhoods. We seemed to commute to dinner down the long, January-dark Via di Santo Spirito almost every night.

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Via del Leone, 40r
50123 Florence, Italy

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39 55 22 4192

Day 4 - Florence

Up promptly this morning for an ascent of one of the West's artistic Everests, the Uffizi gallery, less than a block from the hotel. Lunch at Antico Fatto, too was only steps from both gallery and hotel. We finally left the neighborhood in the afternoon for a walk around the city including the fabulously overdecorated Medici Chapel.

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piazza di San Lorenzo
Piazza San Lorenzo
50123 Florence, Italy

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055-216-634

Day 6 - Florence

Today's walk around the northeastern center of Florence included the famous David (outshone, in my mind, by the Accademia's fine collection of Gothic paintings), a museum of the colored-stone opus sectile tables and such that are seen in collections all over Florence, and the famous Della Robbia decorations of the orphanage imitated in at least three places in San Francisco alone.

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Day 7 - Florence

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Piazza Santa Croce 16
Piazza Santa Croce
50122 Florence, Italy

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+39 055 244 619

Day 8 - Florence

A lot of walking today: around the city, up the dome of the Duomo, and around the fortresses and churches east of the Boboli Gardens.
We were sustained by two paragons of Tuscan cooking. For lunch, Da Mario, a wonderful hole in the wall packed to the rafters and with barely an amenity but filled with warmth and serving standard-setting renditions of classic Tuscan dishes. At dinner, Vecchia Bettola, a big and bustling and yet nearly impossible to find trattoria near San Frediano's western city wall, where the stellar crostini while we waited for our table made us glad we'd been late for our reservation, and it was impossible to decide what looked best from all of the tables packed in around us.